"It has been the misfortune of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the constitution of our country were to be always a subject rather of altercation than enjoyment." - Edmund Burke anticipates the Neverendum

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Attorney General calls for Guantanamo to close

"LORD Goldsmith, the Attorney General, has issued the government's strongest condemnation yet of Guantanamo Bay, calling for its immediate closure.

The prison camp was branded a symbol of injustice, by Britain's most senior law officer in a speech to lawyers and security experts last night.

His intervention is set to embarrass the Bush administration in the United States, which has rejected calls for the closure of the American jail on Cuban soil as it breaches international law. "The existence of Guantanamo Bay remains unacceptable," Lord Goldsmith told a security conference at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

"It is time, in my view, that it should close. Not only would it, in my personal opinion, be right to close Guantanamo as a matter of principle, I believe it would also help to remove what has become a symbol to many - right or wrong - of injustice.

"The tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol.""